


heart

by rmaowl



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Baby Keith (Voltron), Difficult Decisions, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Season/Series 05 Spoilers, Songfic, because of flashbacks not deaging or anything like that, grandon is just a placeholder name for keith’s dad and will be changed if he gets a canon name, let me know if there are any tags you think i should add?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 03:57:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13895733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmaowl/pseuds/rmaowl
Summary: Everything begins to click as he takes in her characteristics with a sudden new perspective. Her hair, her facial features, her stature. All of those traits had been passed down to him by her.





	heart

**Author's Note:**

> the song featured in this fic is heart by sleeping at last, if you’d like to take a listen!

_I am short of breath, standing next to you._

Keith stares up at Krolia, her purple-pink fur illuminated in the scarlet lights of the ship he had been piloting only a second ago. Incomprehensibly blurred thoughts race through his head. His lips are left slightly parted in his shock. His lungs start to fail him, ceasing to take in oxygen. Everything begins to click as he takes in her characteristics with a sudden new perspective. Her hair, her facial features, her stature. All of those traits had been passed down to him by her.

_I am out of my depth at this altitude._

"...Mom?" He questions in a voice that's barely audible, yet a sense of urgency drips from the single word. The truth is, he'd only ever spoken it from a place of frustration or bitterness before this very moment. Now, it had been fashioned into a complicatedly desperate plea.

_Like the world makes sense from your window seat, you are beautiful like I've never seen._

"Yes, my son," she murmurs. The uncomfortable feeling of being overexposed washes over him, caused by her understanding gaze. It bore holes into him. His thoughts and feelings were spread out for her to read like an open book, and she was witnessing all of his torn, ragged, pain-soaked pages.

_Go ahead and laugh, even if it hurts._

Gazing down at her son, the spiderweb cracks in Krolia's heart spread out just a little further. She's shattering inside, seeing his hopeful yet mistrustful face, because this was caused by her.

_Go ahead and pull the pin._

Her mind takes her back to a time before her wonderful child had existed, with only Grandon at her side. They had gazed at each other with adoration and infatuation, their pupils swelling and lips curling up into smiles. Her face had felt hot. She was in love, and so was he.

_What if we could risk everything we have and just let our walls cave in?_

They'd started talking about having children a short while after that. They'd taken things too fast, young and dumb and not sure exactly how it would work with their slightly differing anatomies. However, something must have gone right.

_I am short of breath, standing next to you._

Krolia had simply known, one morning. It was something ingrained in her, an ancient Galran instinct. She'd splayed a hand out on her stomach and wept tears of joy, pulling her knees closer to her chest. She'd dragged their blanket back up onto the bed with the motion, she remembers, pulling it from its drooping state on the floor.

_I'll be the dangerous ledge, you be the parachute._

"Krolia?" Grandon had burst into the room, his dark amber eyes swimming with concern. She'd looked up at him, their gazes connecting. Soon, Grandon was on the exact same page of their story as she was without a single word being spoken.

_Blue and green below is a masterpiece, but you are beautiful like I've never seen._

Keith had been diminutive, and she had loved him all the same, despite her fear of a cursedly fleeting lifespan. He had been able to fit in her cupped hands, scaring and exciting her at the same time. His birth had equaled the beginning of a new era in their lives.

_Go ahead and laugh, even if it hurts._

He'd given her a litany of weak mewling cries that sent cacophonous pangs throughout her chest. Strong urges to protect and care for him overwhelmed her, so she'd clutched him close to her heart. He had calmed, stilling under her empathetic touch. She had given him life, and he was hers in the most intimate and delicate of ways.

_Go ahead and pull the pin._

She'd handed Keith over to Grandon, her movements overly gentle. He had then been dwarfed even further by her mate's large calloused hands, causing her heart to twinge. She wasn't sure if it was a positive or negative feeling, but she'd never felt it before. She hadn't known there were still new feelings for her to discover this late on into her lifespan, and it'd been an exhilarating moment.

_What if we could risk everything we have and just let our walls cave in?_

Keith had grown up relatively healthy, aside from some major scares early on in his life, much to his parents' relief. Krolia coddled him often, the thought of losing him causing her great pain. Grandon had a less affectionate approach to parenting, though he still cared in his own small ways. Keith had simply loved his parents with the blind innocence of a child.

_Go ahead and laugh, even if it hurts._

Krolia had watched him grow, and though he would still have been considered a runt in the Galran culture, his intelligence more than made up for his size. He was her precious son, and she wouldn't have traded him for anything.

_Go ahead and pull the pin._

Just as her young Keith was entering an educational system named 'the kindergarten', Krolia began to wonder. She was never supposed to have this life, hiding away on Earth with the most gorgeous human mate and an incredible hybrid child of her own. Who knew when the Blade of Marmora could find her and bring her back? What if, when they did reach her, they harmed the little family that she'd created for herself?

_What if we could risk everything we have and just let our walls cave in?_

She'd made the decision, that fated night, to leave them and return to the Blade on her own terms. Apologize, tell a lie of commission. Never reveal her Earthen  family, lest they be killed or tortured. Live her life of sacrificial danger, protecting them from the skies. It was for the best, she told herself as tears impaired her vision. They would be safer without her there.

_Let our walls cave in._

Several solitary years later, she'd begun to hear reoccurring stories about the legendary robotic lions from the old children's tales. People were beginning to think, for some unknown reason, that these robots were real tangible beings. All the stories had confused her, at first, and of course she hadn't believed a single one. There was a significant lack of proof, enough to cause her suspicion to arise.

Then she'd seen the Red Paladin, and everything had changed abruptly.

_Let our walls cave in._


End file.
